Kukla's Korner Hockey

- While one longtime NHL pro scout said the fiery Patrick Roy is “a train wreck,” Roy’s arrival in Denver as Colorado Avalanche head coach has made the team relevant again. That’s a good thing. Did anybody care about the Avalanche the last three or four years?

- Pretty much everybody feels winger Thomas Vanek will be leaving the Buffalo Sabres at season’s end and may take a pay-cut to play in Minnesota, where he went to school. The tie-in is also Vanek’s Buffalo buddy Jason Pominville, who just got a five-year deal with the Minnesota Wild.

- What do you pay the Sedin twins, who each have one year left at $6 million a season, then they’re unrestricted free agents? The 33-year-olds would likely go for $7.5 million each, but would they do it for more than three years?

- It has been more than 40,000 days since the Philadelphia Flyers last won the Stanley Cup in the spring of 1976, when they were the last NHL team with an entirely Canadian lineup. The Montreal Canadiens iced an all-North American squad (including Americans John LeClair and Mathieu Schneider) when they won their last Cup in 1993.